Wed Dec. 21 - Coming Home (Alexi Murdoch)

For I am convinced that neither life nor death,
neither angels nor demons,
neither the present nor the future,
nor any powers,
neither height nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

                 - Romans 8:38-39



Sometimes less words are better; in the case of talking about dwelling in to God's love made manifest at Christmas, maybe too many words just flatten the mystery.  So just a handful:

It's possible that Alexi Murdoch's Orange Sky is a song about romantic love or love for a parent, but the language is almost confessional in tone -- 'in your love, my salvation lies, in your love.'  No matter the subject, this is not an individualistic, self-interested love - but rather a love that wraps into an entire system, a community.  It is salvation that includes the brother and sister standing by, that allows the speaker to find hope and strength and recognize a home place.

Alexi Murdoch, Home

It's 'a long road we've been walking on,' and sometimes it's easier to let our 'strong minds' carry on in the belief that we are alone, that our broken hearts are fractured too completely... but we know better.

Here is what I know now:

The Love that comes at Christmas comes something like in this song, both intensely personal and yet wholly communal.  The love of Christ's birth isn't inward-facing, but saves us to be with others and the world.  This love saves us not just by some feat of "substitutionary atonement" or sacrificial suffering, but also simply by being what it is: the love of God made so real and immediate that it needed to take on flesh in order to look us truly and fully in the eyes.  

This is what I know now: we are loved beyond our imaging, beyond height and depth and all powers, and that this is love that has power and force to free and save us - even from ourselves.  In this end, this love is where I live; this love is my home that doesn't save me or take me from the earth, but roots me more fully in the here and the now of things, alongside my sisters and brothers, creatively, openly, communally loving and being loved into the world that is sill being born this season.

May we dwell in the knowledge that our salvation lies in the love God which is so elemental, so radical, that it became human and dwelt among us.

                      - Anna